We’ve dressed it up, dressed it down, loaded it with organic, local products, paired it with obscure beers and mysterious spirits. We've brought in little touches of Italy, Korea, England and Mexico. We've cured it, pickled it, fermented it. We've given it tattoos and a $150 apron and garnished it with Edison lightbulbs.

The saddlebags runneth over.

All of which is to say that it is immensely difficult to stand out among the teeming hordes of modern American “gastropubs” and variations thereon that dominate the dining scene in Phoenix. And though it’s mostly a large-scale riff on the tropes we’ve slipped into a little too comfortably, Stock & Stable flirts with the notion of doing just that.

Evening Entertainment Group's previous ventures, like Bottled Blonde and The Mint, are better known for their slick nightclub vibe than their culinary acumen. Owners Les and Diane Corieri, titans of the local nightlife scene for more than three decades, know how to build a room and stuff it with a hip crowd.

Despite the enormous amount of care that has gone into its construction, thebuilding isn’t where their new restaurant makes its mark. On Seventh Street in 2017, multimillion-dollar adaptive reuse — in this case, The Colony, off Missouri Avenue — is a matter of keeping up with the Joneses. To wit, though Stock & Stable fronts with an equestrian name and has at times styled itself as a throwback to Grandma’s kitchen in the Midwest, this is a trendy restaurant through and through.

The scene

Building the dining room around a huge central bar may, indeed, have been inspired by “Cheers,” but Cliff and Norm weren’t yakking on cellphones plugged into built-in USB ports while slugging champagne cocktails with names that reference Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.

Interested in this topic? You may also want to view these photo galleries:

None of which is a complaint. There is absolutely a place for large, hip, contemporary gastropub-inspired restaurants, and that place happens to be right where Stock & Stable stands, which is why it’s in good company. Seventh Street sports hip and contemporary in spades, and it falls on chef Joe Absolor (formerly of The Parlor and Clever Koi) to make sure the food separates Stock & Stable from the pack.

It teeters on the brink of success. With a little nudge, it might get there.

The cocktail pyrotechnics are mostly housed at Honor Amongst Thieves, Stock & Stable’s sister “speakeasy,” joined at the hip but a separate, upstairs entity with its own faux-secret entrances. The beverages at the restaurant downstairs are also overseen by Corbin James, however, and provide a solid foundation to support a menu that spends a fair amount of time checking boxes, but manages to throw itself at the bars of the cage, even if it never quite breaks free.

Starters like boilerplate brussels sprouts ($12) and a fresh but forgettable chicken and mint salad ($10) share space with the occasional standout dish, like a gleaming plate of frutti di mare ($14), chilled calamari, shrimp and clams, delicately dressed with preserved citrus and celery leaves and just the right amount of salty sting.

Philly cheesesteak egg rolls ($10), split lengthwise and slathered with sauce, hew a little too close to straight-up downscale bar food. And while the messy presentation of the kimchi-clad sloppy Joe tostada ($12) isn’t a problem, its messy, indistinct flavors are more clumsy than casual.

But the jalapeño popper ($8) — an Anaheim chile, actually — rises above the fray. A punchy stuffed pepper encased in a crisp tempura shell, it continues to gently ooze a blend of melted cheeses a full minute after it’s sliced. This is the kind of elevated junk food that exceeds its pedigree while maintaining its gluttonous charms.

Absolor’s take on the ubiquitous beet salad ($10) — lightly fermented, buried under a pile of shaved carrots and served with fried chunks of goat cheese — didn’t quite hit. The raw carrots took over and the beets’ fermented sourness struggled to shine through. Similarly, sweet-and-sour glazed meatballs ($13), a bit on the dry side, were lost in a thick sea of sweet potato mash when just a touch would have done the trick. Both were still a couple of tweaks shy of declaring victory.

Given Absolor’s history with Italian-inspired food, it should come as no surprise the pastas are among the stronger offerings. Purists will take offense, but he throws off some solid riffs. The bucatini ($12), though oversauced, is the most classical offering with an intense, ruddy tomato sauce and crisp, juicy bits of guanciale. Less conventional are the sweet potato manti ($12) — small, Turkish-style dumplings — with brown butter and sage, which benefit from the textural punch of walnut crumbles.

The menu may call it cavatelli ($12), but there’s no mistaking that dish. Absolor’s dolled-up tuna noodle casserole is a giggle-inducing bit of nostalgia, the one offering on the menu that delivers on the Grandma’s kitchen promise. But another pasta, the mafalda ($13), was a puzzling mess, a flat and lifeless beef stroganoff that muted — mercifully, it turns out — noodles flavored with an intensely bitter and unpleasant mystery ingredient.

Cavatelli at the Stock & Stable restaurant in Phoenix on Jan. 5, 2017.(Photo: David Wallace/The Republic)

A crispy chicken sandwich ($13) with hot sauce and provolone and a Tony Packo's-pickled Cubano ($14) both do the job nicely. The Cubano, however, is victimized by its own billing — it isn’t pressed and tastes more like a corned beef deli sandwich than one of Florida’s greatest exports.

Blackened salmon ($18) pairs heavy spice with cool yogurt. But a variable fish of the day ($20), dressed with a bright tomato sauce and a healthy shot of dill, is the stronger of the two preparations, even when the edges shoot past crisp and turn into fish jerky.

Meats tend toward the simple, unfussy end of the spectrum, which can work for or against them. A New York strip ($21) and soy-glazed rib eye ($25) are both flavorful cuts, well-prepared, but the latter is best left to those who dig their meat sugary sweet.

A pork chop ($18) with sweetened apples didn’t quite have the punch to stand up in such a minimal presentation. But the braised short rib ($20) with sweet potatoes and persimmons is a gamer, and the beer butt chicken ($16) is a stripped-down star. This luscious little half bird with crackling skin and a splash of salty oil tweaked with preserved lemon is enough to get me back in the door.

Vegetable sides are mostly unremarkable, though the broccoli rabe ($6), drizzled with citrus caramel, is sweet enough that it could stand in for the short list of perfunctory desserts. Banana cream pie ($5) and a jar of chocolate mousse with peanut butter ($5) will do in a pinch.

The lowdown

As a concept, the “modern American gastropub,” isn’t going anywhere. The dining public votes with their wallets, and in return, restaurateurs have given them more of what they buy. The challenge for these restaurants is in figuring out ways to strike a balance between familiar and fresh, and to execute in a manner that allows them to stand out. While Absolor's menu is pointed in the right direction and has its hits, they aren’t yet frequent or reliable enough to clear that bar.

To its credit, amongst the glitzy pile of style-conscious eateries that adorn its central Phoenix neighborhood, this one is closer to making a mark than most. But on the new Seventh Street, like a 50-kilowatt marquee on the Vegas Strip, Stock & Stable blends right in.